Re: [RFC PATCH] format-patch: better commit list for cover letter

Mirko Faina [off-list ref] writes:

On Fri, Feb 20, 2026 at 08:54:50PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

 (1) Drop the abbreviated object name, as they are useless garbage.
     The result of applying these patches will not have these commit
     object names anyway, so even when people find these messages on
     a mail archive in 6 months, they will not find the result of
     applying the patches from the official project history with
     these object names.

Should there be a reference to the author ident instead of the object
name then? A quick glance on who worked on what before diving into the
patches themselves might be useful.

quoted

 (2) Do we need to make this optional, in order to allow those users
     who do prefer the current "shortlog" style that groups patches
     from the same person together to keep the original style?  I am
     undecided myself.

Maybe the "--cover-letter" option can take an argument like
"--cover-letter=<shortlog | commitlist>". Although I doubt there's
anyone that actually likes the shortlog version, it gives very little
information. I'm inclined to think that most leave it there because they
think it must be somewhat since it is the default, tho this is just my
assumption.

Just off the top of my head...

Perhaps with

    [format]
	commitListFormat ;# true

we use

	[1/1] format-patch: better commit list for cover letter

and with

    [format]
	commitListFormat="%s (%an)"

we use

	[1/1] format-patch: better commit list for cover letter	(Mirko Faina)

instead.  IOW, the value of the configuration variable is used as
the format argument "log --format=...", and appended to the fixed
[n/m] that gives the numbers.

Without format.commitListFormat defined, or when it is defined to
false, we'd use the traditional "shortlog" format.

Hmm?